“The Good Wife” recap: “The lesbian Fed is not your friend” (Ep. 4.5)

Looking for one solid hour of television? See: last night’s Good Wife. Let’s jump right in so can cover it all.

We start with Lemond Bishop making a sandwich for his adorable son, talking about karate lessons and parties. Adorable Drug Dealer’s Son: cue conflicted heart pangs. And Domestic Fatherly Lemond is so charming! But when every one of the 2435 phones he has in the house start ringing at once, we know all is not well in paradise.

We’re then tossed right back to the straw poll where we left off last episode. Jackie’s still contemplating bugs in her drink; Maddie shows up and confirms that she and Alicia are still on for drinks later; Eli continues to flip his shit over the blogger who’s going to defame Peter. He calls Will to ask that he intimidate the blogger with a cease and desist order while a donkey merrily dances in the background.

Alicia is soon called to Lemond Bishop’s house with Diane; they’re met by another lawyer who works for a firm that covers Lemond’s drug business, while Lockhart & Gardner cover the legit ones. All the lawyer ladies exchange some competitive squabbles, to which Lemond laments at one point, “I’m surrounded by women.” Because women are the only people who are competitive, don’t cha know!

Back at the office, Kalinda is also called on to help, but is first distracted by Cary directing her into his office, where Sketchy Husband awaits. Phew, I was almost starting to miss him! No I wasn’t! They play an irritating game of pretending-not-to-know-each-other, but Cary isn’t so dumb. In fact, Cary wins as the Empathetic Keen Observer this week, clearly concerned about Kalinda at this point. He then also encourages Nathan Lane later on, who helps with some accounting work for Lemond’s case and turns giddy at being actually useful. This is probably the only feel-good storyline of the entire episode, really.

But back to the current moment, where Sketchy Husband is going on about whatever this truck business is he’s trying to get into, which continues to sound exceedingly non-interesting. Kalinda has vetted another dude to help him get into the game, a dude who happens to be black, and whom Sketchy Husband makes a few racist comments towards as well. You know, in case we still weren’t quite sure of his character. Like a sly, stinky fox, he tries to coerce Kalinda into saying that, with this business deal, she is approving of him putting down roots in Chicago. To which I want to punch him in the face. She says she just did her job; he can do whatever he wants. And then, as so often happens, she’s saved by a phone call from Alicia.

Sketchy Husband follows her into the hall, hearing the last bit of the conversation and then whining to her about her “lesbian girlfriend” again. He says “lesbian girlfriend” redundantly at least three times. Get over it, dude! She says that he’s an idiot, that it wasn’t even Lana on the phone, just work. He says that he doesn’t mind her working. Aw, thanks, bud! How considerate and progressive!

But then he says the one truthful thing he’s said all season, a moment of insight that made me feel weirdly triumphant even though the words were coming out of his stupid mouth: “Your voice on that phone was not work, Kalinda.”

Of course it wasn’t. It was Alicia.

Back at the Bishop household, Kalinda reveals that the Feds are indeed closing in on Lemond but are looking into his legit businesses this time, not the drugs. While he instructs the ladies to figure out what the hell is going on, he also tells Alicia that he wants her, specifically, to be there when the police arrive. He doesn’t want his son to be scared, and he doesn’t want “an accident to befall me” when they arrive. Diane interrupts to assure him that won’t happen. Excuse me, he says. I am a wanted black man. It will.

In straw poll headquarters–oh my God, the straw poll is still happening–the blog post has gone up, and Eli is still up in arms about it. Peter actually steps up as the Decent Human Being here, and is all, you sent a cease and desist? Dude, calm down and just back away, don’t even give it attention because it doesn’t deserve it. I’m on Peter’s side here, as this is exactly how I feel about Ann Coulter and generally any campaign ad ever. But Eli’s heart is made of politics and he knows he can’t not care.

Meanwhile, they’ve tracked down where the trouble for Lemond began, with business partner Dex, otherwise known as one of my favorite hoodlums from the Wire. Glad to know you’ve moved up in the game, Bodie. Lemond shares some more heart-tugging moments about his son with Alicia: none of the other parents will let their kids be friends with him because of, you know, his dad being a drug dealer thing. And then Kalinda spies a van down the street from the Bishop stronghold, which she figures out pretty quickly is the FBI, and Lana inside the van figures out pretty quickly that Kalinda has figured it out.

Man, I love it when you’re better at your job than we are.

Let’s do less of this figuring stuff out, and more of the making out, right?

Then Alicia keeps Adorable Son company while the FBI ransack Daddy’s house. This is always a cheery scene. Alicia makes it better by telling Adorable Son that she got to see Michael Jordan win a national championship once, which automatically ups her cool points to about ten hundred million.